On March 2, four ATVs set
off into the blistering Colorado Desert, 122 miles east of Los Angeles, in
search of understanding.

The trip was dreamed up by
Phil Jackson, the famed coach whose teams have won 11 NBA championships.
With him were James Dolan, the unpopular owner of the struggling New York
Knicks, and the team’s general manager, Steve Mills.

“I had a guide lead us on a
wild chase across the desert in all-terrain vehicles, to see how my future
colleagues would respond in hostile territory,” wrote basketball’s “Zen
Master” in a July update to his 2013 best seller, Eleven Rings: The Soul
of Success.

While no one knows exactly
what went down—fan forums were convinced peyote was involved—Jackson
returned from the desert not as coach of the Knicks but as president (with a
$12 million annual salary). Even more surprising, the infamously hands-on
Dolan conceded that he would be the one to call the shots.

Jackson’s explanation of
what was hailed as a miracle? “Under the clear desert sky, Jim and I had a
meeting of the minds.”

Celebration was general over
Manhattan. After all, Jackson had played on the last Knicks team (1973) to
bring home the championship. But questions remained.

Had his use of Zen Buddhist
practices really helped lead the Chicago Bulls to six titles and the Los
Angeles Lakers to five? Would his alternative spirituality fly with the
skeptical New York media, players, and fans? And most important, could his
mysterious mojo turn around a seriously demoralized franchise?

On March 18, he was given a
returning hero’s welcome at a Madison Square Garden press conference to
officially announce his new position. Reaction in the press was positive,
even giddy, as it played up his mystique.

Even the Daily News’
wary Mike Lupica described the hiring of the “the coolest guy in the room”
as a “no-brainer, even for James Dolan.” Only Lupica’s colleague Frank Isola
tried to spoil the party, calling Jackson “an aging 68-year-old former
hippie looking for one final shot at glory.”

Also hoping for a miraculous
reset were the player-survivors of the 2013-14 season, which had been marred
by injuries, lack of draft picks, Mike Woodson’s lackadaisical coaching,
guard Ray Felton’s arrest on gun charges, and the painful-to-watch
over-reliance on six-time All Star and Olympic Gold Medalist Carmelo
Anthony, a high-scoring small forward who played the most minutes per game
in the league even as he inched towards 30.

Gifted but erratic shooting
guard J.R. Smith, fined in the fall of 2013 for untying opposing players’
shoelaces during foul shots, tweeted his approval: “Can’t wait to work with
the great @PhilJackson11 #TheZenMaster.” One-time star forward Amare
Stoudemire told the AP’s Brian Mahoney, “He is a champion and a leader.”

Anthony, facing the option
of free agency, played it cool. Praising what Jackson could bring to the
team (“his philosophy, his mindset, his résumé”), he told ESPN March 13, “I
don’t think it’ll have any effect on me, just as far as what I’m thinking or
my decision.”

As for the fans, two days
after the announcement, Jackson won a standing ovation at the Garden in a
win against the Indiana Pacers. “With the Zen Master watching from the
sidelines, Anthony scored 34 points—with five assists and three steals
thrown in for good measure,” wrote the New York Post’s John DeMarzo.

To be sure, the page the
East Coast media and fans were on was Urbandictionary.com’s, which defines
“zen master” as simply “A nickname for former Bulls and Laker’s coach Phil
Jackson, because of his use of Buddhist [sic] philosophy in basketball”—as
in, “How did Phil keep all of those punk baby beeyitches together for so
long? Because he’s the Zen Master.”

By contrast, when Jackson
was asked about the nickname by Hugh Delehanty on WSB-TV Atlanta, he
answered, “There is no such thing as a Zen Master. No one will master Zen.
The ephemeral moment to moment is all we are fortunate to have.”

Perhaps a little Zen
Buddhism 101 is in order for sportswriters in the country’s biggest media
market. Originating in China in the 6th century, Zen emphasizes meditation
(zazen) in order to discover one’s true self, let go of the ego, be mindful
of one’s actions, and develop compassion for others.

Although one of Buddhism’s
smaller schools, Zen has traveled to Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and to the
West. It often makes use of a teacher (only proclaimed “Master”
posthumously) who answers students’ questions with inscrutable responses (koans)
that bring understanding only after long reflection.

Jackson writes about his
unlikely spiritual journey towards Zen practice in his 1995 book, Sacred
Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Harwood Warrior. Greatly influenced by the
works of
Shunryu Suzuki,
the monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United
States, Jackson wrote that in sitting zazen, “I learned to trust the
moment—to immerse myself in action as mindfully as possible.” For him, the
goal of Zen was “not just to clear the mind, but to open the heart as well.”

Like many Western followers
of Zen, Jackson was not born into Buddhism. Raised in rural Montana as the
son of two Pentecostal preachers, he expected to follow his parents’ strict
religious path. But in spite of daily Bible readings and long services,
Jackson found himself unable to experience the Holy Spirit by speaking in
tongues, which his parents saw as rebellion. “Rather than rejecting their
faith outright,” he wrote, “I dodged services and started working on my jump
shot.”

After studying religion and
philosophy in college, Jackson wandered the West most summers in a van,
looking to Native American beliefs, progressive Christianity, and yoga to
replace what he saw as the restrictions of his family’s faith. In Zen he
found a practice that did not necessarily preclude other belief
systems—something that proved helpful when he introduced it to his ever more
ethnically diverse basketball players.

So what? Some would say that
a turnip could win championships coaching the likes of Michael Jordan,
Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman in Chicago, and Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe
Bryant in Los Angeles. But in Eleven Rings, Jackson explains that the
players’ clashing personalities, outsized egos, insecurities, and jockeying
for dominance made coaching difficult. “If the players don’t have a sense of
oneness as a group,” he writes, “your efforts won’t pay off.”

Jackson started his players
off with 10-minute meditations during practice to facilitate “taking a more
mindful approach to the game and to their relationships with one another.”
To build trust and unselfish play, Jackson tried scrimmages with the lights
turned down low, silent practices, and simply observing players who liked to
act up. Incorporating his interest in Native American beliefs, Jackson
called players to meetings by beating a drum, and hung tribal artifacts in
his office. He taught them about having respect for your enemy, be it a wolf
or a New Jersey Net.

He even pulled some
techniques from his Pentecostal bag of tricks, placing the pre-season Bulls
behind a line and telling them, “God has ordained me to coach you young men,
and I embrace the role I’ve been given. If you wish to accept the game I
embrace and follow my coaching, as a sign of your commitment, step across
that line.”

When it comes to basketball
strategy, Jackson believes strongly in the little-used triangle offense, an
approach that stresses passing the ball to whoever has the best position to
score. “Basketball contains larger truths for Jackson, and the triangle is
the key to unlocking those truths,” wrote Grantland.com’s Zach Lowe, one of
the few sports analysts who appreciate the intersection between his
spirituality and his technical approach to the game. “Any team that hires
him should be prepared to install it and commit to it.”

After the initial
enthusiasm, New York sportswriters began to get antsy when Jackson had
trouble meeting his first big challenge, hiring a new coach to replace Mike
Woodson. His initial and seemingly only choice, Steve Kerr, who had played
for him in Chicago, instead went to Oakland to coach the Golden State
Warriors—this, after it was reported that he had given Jackson a verbal OK.

“Phil Jackson failed in his
first, very public task,” pronounced Barry Petchesky of Deadspin.com
May 15. “In the embarrassing aftermath of the Steve Kerr fiasco, Phil
Jackson was described by one league executive as ‘looking like a beaten man
already,’” sneered the Daily News’
Frank Isola.

Jackson himself spoke
philosophically about Kerr’s decision, telling reporters in a
question-and-answers session May 30, “I understood entirely the process he
was going through.”

On June 10, the Knicks
announced that the new head coach would be Derek Fisher, who had won five
championships as a guard with Jackson’s Lakers. The next challenge, a bigger
one, came on June 22, when Carmelo Anthony decided to opt out of the final
year of his contract and test free agency.

As stories about Anthony
being courted by the Bulls, the Lakers, and others, began bouncing around
the Internet, fan forums started sounding suicidal. Knicks’ bean counters
fretted about losing the player who guaranteed a sold-out Garden for every
game, whose official jersey (number 7) had outsold even LeBron James’ during
the 2012-2013 season.

When asked about re-signing
Anthony at an April press conference, Jackson had responded with Zen
equanimity: “If it’s in the cards man are we fortunate. If it’s not in the
cards, man are we fortunate and we’re going forward anyway.” He challenged
his star to return for less than the allowed maximum salary of $129 million
and a five-year contract, to give the team the cash to sign another top
player in 2015.

Ironically, it was
Isola—whose long feud with the Knicks organization got to the point of his
never being called on in press conferences until Jackson broke with
tradition—who on Tuesday, July 9 tweeted the rumor that turned out to be
true: “Thursday is decision day & it looks like Melo’s coming home.”

Isola reported that Jackson
had flown out to Los Angeles the previous week and engaged the wavering
Anthony in an evening-long conversation. Although we don’t know exactly what
was said, the bottom line was, according to Isola’s source, “I Believe in
Phil.”

Thursday turned into Sunday
as Anthony waited out LeBron James’ decision to return to the Cleveland
Cavaliers and the Northeast Ohio love fest that followed. He finally
announced his return (with a discount of seven million dollars from his max
salary) with a statement on his website that pointed to the desire to win a
championship in the city of his birth.

Of course, the questions
remain. Will Jackson stabilize the franchise and chill out the “catastrophe
or triumph” auto-settings of much of the New York sports media? Can he and
Derek Fisher make the triangle system work, turn the Knicks into an
enlightened band of brothers, and at least snag a spot in next season’s
playoffs?

What we do know is how the
Zen Master sees the way forward. As he writes in the introduction to
Sacred Hoops, “Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has
its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to
experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart.”